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Since 1970, the worst terrorist attack in the United Kingdom was the downing of Pan Am Flight 103 in December 1988 above Lockerbie, Scotland, which caused 270 fatalities. Of the ten worst terrorist attacks in the UK, seven were related to the troubles in Northern Ireland, while two were related to Islamic extremism. The London 7/7 bombings in 2005, which caused the deaths of 56 people, and the Manchester Arena bombing in May 2017, which claimed the lives of 23 people.

Are terrorist attacks in the UK on the rise?

When compared with earlier decades, the number of terrorist attacks in the UK has declined considerably. Throughout the 1970s, there were approximately 1,644 terrorist attacks, 1,315 in the 1980s, and 1,214 in the 1990s, compared with just 325 in the 2000s, and 925 in the 2010s. During this period, the year with the highest number of attacks was 1972 when there were 292. Although the period between 2013 and 2018 saw a high volume of terrorist attacks, this has started to decline in more recent years. In 2021, for example there were 40 terrorist attacks, the fewest since 2009.

A global threat

In 2023, 21,596 people lost their lives due to terrorism, with Syria suffering the highest number of attacks at 1,405. The UK was not alone in seeing the intensity of terror attacks increase in the mid-2010s, either. The Paris Attacks of November 2015 caused 130 fatalities, while the Nice attacks in 2016 led to 86 deaths, some of the worst terrorist incidents to have ever taken place in Europe. Due to these attacks, the number of deaths caused by terrorism was significantly higher in 2015 and 2016 than in other years, at 152, and 142 respectively.